Three examples of Labor MP’s gutting jobs and workers and an expression of appreciation for three Labor MP’s who approach us face-to-face and honestly deal with issues.
The Labor party as a whole no longer protects workers.
Today’s Labor party savages workers and families. Labor has lost relevance and instead of caring about workers and being honest many Labor MPs tell lies and omit facts.
What works with us and what we like is for MP’s to approach us openly, bring data and share it freely to back up their request, and above all, to be honest.
Transcript
Following last week’s parliamentary sessions in Canberra here’s a longer video with more facts on policies hurting workers and a compliment to one New South Wales senator who approached us openly and respectfully on an issue.
Let’s set the record straight on a recent change to federal regulations, to allow employers and employees to quickly amend an existing Enterprise Agreement to deal with the COVID-19 crisis and keep their business going and employing people.
For businesses that are struggling to survive due to COVID-19, this allows employers to ask employees to vote on changes to an existing EA more quickly, in as short as 24 hours, rather than the normal 7 days. Unprecedented times call for flexibility for employers and employees.
We agree that some businesses need this and workers in those businesses understand. It was One Nation though that negotiated with the government to add the 12-month sunset clause, so that if employees agree to amend their EA for COVID, all pay and conditions would return after 12 months.
That’s fair. Typically, Labour then spread the lie that these temporary changes with a shorter voting period would be permanent, when they’re not. Remember, the regulation does not force you to agree. If you lack adequate time to vote on it, you can vote no.
So, to Labor’s Tony Burke and Joel Fitzgibbon, you have been caught lying to the workers you claim to represent. Labour seems to hate that it was One Nation who negotiated with the government to improve the bill, and made amendments to protect workers and workers’ rights.
And I put on notice any employer that thinks of using COVID-19 to screw workers by taking advantage of new regulations when COVID-19 restrictions have not affected them. In places like mines with 24 hour shift-work, employers would be crazy to give only one day to vote because that would force some workers to come in to vote on their day off or after a long shift on night work.
And workers who are annoyed would likely vote against the amended EA anyway. Anyway, as far as we know from listening to miners, COVID-19 is not affecting most mines’ operations. Remember, the new regulation does not apply to voting on a new EA, only to changes to an existing EA.
The regulation that is part of the COVID-19 response package only improves the flexibility for those businesses where employers and employees need a quick change to deal with COVID. We all know that life is about making choices, especially in politics where we face so many different people’s competing needs. Quite often, we have to choose between two difficult choices.
On one hand the viability of employers to protect jobs, and on the other hand protecting workers and worker’s rights. To make sure workers are protected while giving employees and employers greater flexibility to negotiate changes quickly to keep people in work, One Nation added the 12 month sunset clause.
The government agreed and will change the regulation. That means that after 12 months an EA with COVID changes returns back to the original conditions. This was done by One Nation to protect workers from employers in case those employers later tried to make COVID changes continue forever.
We’re in unprecedented times, yet we will not let this pandemic be used as an excuse to drag this out any longer than it should. One Nation identifies real issues and protects workers’ rights. Let’s get the background facts on what happened.
Labour has been sidelined with two things, the focus on the government during COVID and a lame federal leader in Anthony Albanese after a distrusted leader in Bill Shorten. A few weeks ago a journalist asked me for comment on the possibility of voting on Labor’s disallowance of the regulation.
What disallowance? That was news to us. When there is a real issue though, Labour contacts us to get our support. Union delegates contact us. Yet we heard nothing from unions or Labour. It was not a serious issue and Labour did not make an argument for it.
Later, when we saw the disallowance motion on the senate agenda we contacted Labour and we contacted union delegates. Union delegates said they had no issue. We reviewed the regulation and realised that some employees and employers would want to negotiate changes quickly to keep people in work under COVID isolation rules, others would make no changes and others still would make minor changes slowly to remain viable.
The key though, is that we saw a loophole that needed to be closed. So we approached the government and explained it. The government agreed with us and is amending the regulation to protect workers’ rights. That change that One Nation senators proposed was to put a sunset clause on any changes to protect workers after the COVID crisis ends. To protect workers.
Now, desperate Labour MPs, like Tony Burke, Joel Fitzgibbon, Katy Gallagher, falsely and needlessly mislead and worry honest workers in an attempt for political gain. We though in One Nation got to the core issue and fixed it to protect workers’ rights.
By the way, let me remind you that Tony Burke, when he was Labor’s Environment Minister, pushed anti-coal measures that are still hurting our coal industry and therefore hurting coal miners. And raising electricity prices that are still hurting all workers and all family householders, and exporting manufacturing and processing jobs to China.
So let me remind everyone, that Tony Burke enacted drastic UN regulations that gutted our fishing industry and gave power over our country to faceless unelected UN bureaucrats. Now, he dares misleads people about the disallowance motion and forgets to tell people that One Nation negotiated changes in the regulations to ensure workers rights are protected.
As for Joel Fitzgibbon, after he was nearly tipped out as the rep for Hunter, last federal election, he started to talk more about coal. Yet his words remain hollow, because his Labour party bosses continue anti-coal policies.
Where the old and real Labour party protected miners and workers, today’s Labour party protects the UN and pushes UN policies. These days Labour does not care about Australian workers. Labour hurts Australian workers.
Labour tells lies to Australian workers and Labour hurts our democracy. Another example of Labour mismanagement of workers is immigration policies, immigration numbers. After One Nation alone for years called to cut immigration numbers, recently Labour senator Kristina Keneally wrote an article calling for immigration to not be the same after COVID as before.
Yet she and others had been viciously and falsely labelling our demands for immigration cuts as racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic. The reality is that we could see that huge immigration numbers suppress wages, raise house prices, put pressure on infrastructure like roads, hospitals, schools and drive casualization of the workforce.
So last week in the senate I moved a matter of public importance motion that became a test of her commitment to her new words. You know what? She hid the whole day until after my motion had been debated.
Labour MPs refused to back her call for lower immigration numbers. Remember, the largest intake of temporary visa workers in any year occurred when Bill Shorten was minister for workplace relations under the Gillard Green’s government and authorised them.
Labour hurts Australian workers. Labour does not care about Australian workers. Labour tells lies. I take this opportunity though to express appreciation to Senator Tony Sheldon from New South Wales who approached us about getting Dnata employees in airline catering to be put on the government’s JobKeeper programme despite the government saying that welfare would not go to 100% foreign owned companies.
Dnata is 100% owned by a Middle Eastern country. We asked Senator Sheldon for data and gave us some. We asked the government for data and got plenty.
We then realised that these days domestic flights usually provide minimal food such as packaged peanuts, no big meals International flights though cater for solid meals yet most of those flights won’t start again until early next year, maybe mid next year and JobKeeper ends in late September this year. Plus, JobKeeper payments are taxed.
JobSeeker though is open to Australian workers, are not taxed and often come with additional payments such as family allowance and rental assistance. We checked the data and JobSeeker payments are comparable with JobKeeper after tax is removed from JobKeeper.
More importantly, JobSeeker continues beyond September and into next year so Dnata workers will be better protected on JobSeeker. We made a decision on the facts we gathered and in our view it is better to put the situation openly to Dnata people, many of whom will not have a job after September and need to sign up for JobSeeker as soon as possible.
Now we appreciate Tony Sheldon’s care and his open approach to us to consider his motion, we trust Tony because he’s honest. He’s a former TWU union delegate, like Senators Glenn Sterle and Alex Gallacher, who we find are excellent to deal with in the senate and are knowledgeable and caring.
Like Pauline and me, One Nation values honesty.
